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Thomas Arne

The London theatre composer who wrote Rule, Britannia! and the Shakespeare songs

ClassicalMasqueOrgan

Who he was

Thomas Arne (1710–1778) was the leading English theatre composer of the eighteenth century. He was the son of a London upholsterer, educated at Eton and destined for the law, but taught himself music and entered the theatre as a violinist. He wrote music for Comus in 1738 and for the masque Alfred in 1740, whose finale, Rule, Britannia!, became almost a second national anthem. He wrote songs for the Vauxhall Gardens for years, and his Artaxerxes of 1762, sung in Italian, was a rare serious opera on the London stage.

His place

He belongs to the London that followed Handel. Handel had brought Italian opera seria to England and also brought it into crisis; Arne took a different route, writing mainly English stage works, masques, incidental music, songs and glees for audiences in theatres and pleasure gardens. His melodies are direct, his harmony clear and his phrases short, easier to sing along with than Handel's, which is exactly the character the commercial London theatre needed.

What to hear

Listen first for how a number opens. Rule, Britannia! begins with a band introduction that fixes key and pace, and when the voice enters the texture and volume suddenly thin out, which is where the drama lies. Then listen for the division between recitative and aria. In Artaxerxes the recitative pushes the plot and the aria stops to unfold a feeling, and the rhythmic difference between them is large. Finally listen for the weight of the words. In his Shakespeare settings the accents follow the text, and the accompaniment changes harmony at the key words.

Key works

Influence

He turned English stage music into a sustainable professional field, and later British theatre music and songwriting follow that line. Rule, Britannia! entered national ceremony and the choral tradition, and his Shakespeare songs still appear in song recitals. Any account of eighteenth-century English music that stops at Handel is incomplete.

Listen in the library

Rule, Britannia!C15:52《Rule, Britannia!》，听乐队引子与独唱进入的落差，旋律靠三和弦堆起（C1）DetailsArtaxerxesC13:27《Artaxerxes》，意大利式正歌剧，宣叙调接咏叹调，听英式亨德尔传统的延续（C1）DetailsBlow, Blow, Thou Winter WindC12:20《Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind》，莎士比亚词，分节歌，听伴奏怎样跟着词义变（C1）DetailsThe Miller of MansfieldC11:38《The Miller of Mansfield》，剧乐里的歌曲，句短、节奏活泼，是伦敦舞台的日常（C1）Details

All tracks from midicn-lib — inline badge is the license tier (C1 commercial / C2 non-commercial / C3 study only).

Sources

  • 阿恩生平、伦敦剧院与沃克斯霍尔花园职位，参 The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians 的 Arne 条；本文为原创表述
  • 十八世纪英国舞台音乐与莎士比亚配乐传统，参通行英国音乐研究；实例说明为本站听辨提示

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.